My Wife & Kids: Season One

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All Rise...

With Judge Erich Asperschlager, it's more like "My Wife and Cats."

The Charge

He thinks he's the head of the family. Humor him.

Opening Statement

ABC's My Wife and Kids ran for just shy of five seasons, from 2001 to
2005. Co-created and starring Damon Wayans, it marked the comedian's big return
to network television after Fox's seminal sketch show In Living Color.
Though My Wife and Kids didn't push the envelope in the same way as
Wayans' first show, it did use the sitcom formula to present not only an
African-American point of view, but a view of family life with a harder edge
than most of its contemporaries. Nearly a decade after it debuted, the series'
first shortened season is available on DVD.

Facts of the Case

Michael Kyle (Damon Wayans, Bamboozled)
has finally made it. He owns his own shipping company, and has a beautiful house
in the suburbs and a loving family. But that doesn't make life any easier,
especially when his wife, Jay (Tisha Campbell-Martin, Everybody Hates
Chris), announces that she wants to start working full time, leaving him to
deal with his kids. His 16-year-old son, Junior (George Gore II, New York
Undercover), spends his days listening to rap music and fantasizing about
women. His 12-year-old daughter, Claire (Jennifer Freeman, Mercy Street),
is too focused on her body image and keeping up with her friends to give her
parents the time of day. And preschooler Kady (Parker McKenna Posey, Alice Upside Down) is quickly growing
out of her role as Daddy's little girl. What's a father to do?

The Evidence

Wy Wife and Kids is a strange beast. It mixes everything you'd expect
to find in a family sitcom (wacky scenarios, life lessons, child-parent
conflict) with a lot of stuff you wouldn't (frank discussions about sex in front
of the kids, for instance, and a father who alternates between supportive and
scheming). It tries to update the upper middle class black family formula of
The Cosby Show in a way that acknowledges things like rap music and
African American culture, while at the same time hewing to the time-honored
traditions of the TGIF set.

Perhaps the strangest sitcom convention is that, despite everyone making
jokes, no one ever laughs. My Wife and Kids gets that right at least.
Michael is always cracking jokes, and often cracks up his family. But that
relative realism comes with a price. He uses humor as a weapon, casually mocking
family members for no apparent reason other than because he thinks it's funny.
Even if the jokes are clever, it comes across as creepy. Some of the plot
devices are equally disturbing. Is it okay for a parent to invite a bully's
parents over for a dinner party just so he can gather dirt that his kid can use
as verbal ammunition at school the next day? What about getting so worked up
about your son beating you at basketball that you taunt him back and train hard
so you can humiliate him on the court? It all adds up to the portrait of a proud
man who has trouble getting over his own ego despite genuinely loving his
family—a good character for a drama, perhaps, but not so much for a
saccharine sitcom.

There's also something strange about watching a seemingly traditional sitcom
that has a running joke between parents about how much their son masturbates in
the bathroom, or has a dad bribe his son to bring up his grades in order to
satisfy his wife so that she'll satisfy him. That kind of earthiness should be
refreshing but in this context it's just unsettling.

Damon Wayans is the star of the show and he knows it. Every episode revolves
around him in some way. He gets the most jokes, and uses the series as an excuse
to show off his many impressions. That so many of them are hopelessly dated
(Bill Clinton and Louis Farrakhan, for example) isn't his fault. That he can't
go ten minutes without doing one is.

It makes sense for the show to be so Damon Wayans-centric. Otherwise it
would probably be called "A Husband, a Wife, and their Kids." His
character, Michael, is a man of contradictions. He obviously loves his family
and works hard to provide for them, but he also has a very clear idea about the
traditional life he wants in return. He doesn't like his wife working outside
the house partly because he wants their family to be strong, but also because he
wants her to have dinner waiting for him when he gets home from work. He wants
his kids to succeed in life and at school, but isn't afraid to play practical
jokes on them or bully them to get the desired result. Instead of acting like a
grown-up, he's often as childish as they are. And he wonders why he doesn't have
the perfect family?

Compared to the episode count of later seasons, My Wife and Kids: Season
One clocks in with a paltry 12 episodes. The widescreen picture looks crisp
and clear, with a 5.1 audio track that's surround in name only.

Unfortunately, there aren't any extras—no commentary, no making-of
featurette, nothing. My guess is this short first season is testing the waters
to see how much demand there is for this show on DVD. For the fans' sake, I hope
it does well enough that they finally get some bonus materials on later
sets.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

My Wife and Kids was on for five seasons, and ended because Wayans
wanted to, not because the network pulled the plug. That means it had an
audience. The first season didn't do much for me, but it does have some decent
laughs and if you liked it when it originally aired you'll probably like it on
DVD.

Closing Statement

My Wife and Kids is a strange show that can't quite decide what it
wants to be. It looks like a traditional sitcom, but tries for a half-hearted
realism that feels out of place. Though his hard-edged comedy doesn't translate
well to a family comedy, Damon Wayans is a charismatic, funny guy. If you liked
the show when it was on, this might be for you. Given everything that's happened
to sitcoms since 2001, though, this style of show is going to feel outdated to
pretty much everyone else.